If you’ve been reading this blog for long enough, it’s probably clear to you that there’s something not right with my brain.

Seriously, though. Besides my propensity for becoming depressed even when there aren’t any precipitating factors, I’ve been having serious memory and concentration problems. I can’t seem to keep things in order lately.

Do you think it’s (1) mad cow/Creutzfield-Jacob Disease (2) major depressive disorder (3) drug-induced delirium (4) transient hypoxia while I was under anesthesia when I had my tonsillectomy as a kid?

Probably a combination of all the above. (I don’t know why I don’t stop eating beef despite the fact that every time I do, I increase the probability that I’m going to end up demented some day.)

OK, I lie, I think there are precipitating circumstances that are kind of getting me down. I suppose it’s the season. Everytime the planet rounds the bend during the Winter Solstice, my thoughts are inexorably drawn towards the notion of Family and Home. I mean, I am planning to go home the weekend of Christmas to see my mom, my dad, and my brother, and my sister will be back on this Coast from school.

But then I keep thinking about the Christmases to come. Where am I gonna be 5 years, 10 years from now? (When did I start thinking so far ahead?)

And so I went to a Christmas party the other day and it hit me how so many people my age have pretty much completely figured out their lives. Career all set. Married. Even some with kids.

And I suppose it’s not the domesticity of it all that I’m longing for. It’s just this absurdly idealistic, romantic notion that someone might want to take this journey through life with me. I won’t have to spend so many hours all alone locked inside the chamber of horrors that is my skull, my brain, my consciousness. I would feel connected, however tenuously, to the rest of humanity, and I wouldn’t brood over this sense of desolate alienation that haunts me from time to time whenever I stop moving, and stop thinking about the arcane, abstract, ethereal concepts that consume me at work, or that manage to grab my attention as I geek out in front of the computer.

Life outside of work? Hobbies besides blogging and reading?

Sad.

The problem is mostly one of frustration. I lack the discipline and the ability to concentrate which would get me from point A to point B. When I was just a little younger, there were lots of things I would’ve given my life for, would’ve died trying to achieve. There are people whom I would lay my life on the line for, uncaring of my own annihilation.

I just don’t think anything or anyone could ever capture my passion in this same way again.

I don’t know why I’m so certain that this will never happen.

OK, I guess I’m catastrophizing again. Catastrophizing is one of those highly maladaptive behaviors that depressives often adopt. Instead of thinking that I’ve lost this game, but next time I could win, I just assume that because I lost, I must be a loser. Instead of thinking that she didn’t want to go out with me because the timing wasn’t right, there were other circumstances in her life, and my lifestyle isn’t conducive to having a relationship anyway, I just assume that she rejected me because I’m fat and ugly and I suck as a human being. Instead of thinking that this is just a single setback, and I should be able to regain my groove in no time, I assume that this is the end of the world, my life is a complete failure, and maybe I should just kill myself.

Clearly, this is no good.

I’m trying though. I’m trying to catch my malformed suppositions about myself and correct them. There was once a time that I would’ve thought that looking at silver lining was just sophistry and deluded rationalization, but I recognize the falsity inherent in catastrophizing. I mean, how the hell do I know how it’s going to turn out? Highly improbable things have already happened in my life, so what’s to stop other small miracles from occurring?

The thing that I’ve been manuevering around, the thing that I haven’t been able to break through, is the idea of asking a girl out on a date. The longer I fail to do it, the more unlikely it will be that I ever will.

Part of the problem is my strategy, or, more accurately, my lack thereof. I almost naturally gravitate to the Friend Zone™, lost in its murky depths, never to be heard from again.

I have just enough vanity to actually accept the fact that women may very well find me interesting—much like how people can’t help but fail to gawk at car crashes—but no, seriously, I mean, I think I can be interesting and funny, witty and entertaining. I can (most of the time) find something to talk about for at least a few hours. And I’m not averse to exploring and trying new things. I mean, I can be a good time. Sometimes. (My faith in myself starts to waver as I examine these statements, but no…)

It isn’t so much that I fall apart when I’m in the presence of a woman whom I’m very attracted to (although there is a tendency for that to happen) but the fact that I can’t seem to change my own trajectory. I mean, sure, there’s the whole chemistry thing, and the fact that she would need to be physically attracted to me on some level at least, but even ignoring those factors, I can’t seem to make my intentions clear from the outset.

Let’s be perfectly honest here. Let me be frank. I’m a chickenshit.

So until I somehow break through this neuroticism, or until I find that one person whom I would sacrifice everything in my life for, who would light such a burning passion inside my soul that to deny her would be like trying to stop my heart from beating, I’m going to find myself in these depressing non-situations, hanging out but not dating, platonic friends, nothing more, listening to her talk about the guy she’s dating now, and about how great he is, all the while further eroding my self-confidence and my will to live.

This is the great gigantic wall that I’ve been staring at for the past several years. My mind has been scrambling trying to find a solution to this conundrum, trying to figure out how the hell I’m going to get past this. It’s all amounted to nothing thus far. Sometimes I get angry enough with myself that I try to do something about it, but it seems that my adrenaline wears off too soon, leaving me in a cold sweat, but bone-weary and spent. Most of the time I look at this monolithic Wall and throw my hands up in despair, turn around, go home, and go back to sleep.

Maybe it just wasn’t meant to be.

But seriously though, everything else in my life is starting to feel like a distraction from this problem. I mean, sure, I’m fulfilled at work, I like what I’m doing, but I don’t know what my next destination is. Like I said, there isn’t anything that stokes the fires of my passion anymore. There are things that look like fun for a few hours, there are things that can be comforting the way going home can be comforting, but you know that that isn’t where you belong. It’s just a respite, and then it’s back to the world at large, dealing with continual confusion and loneliness. Like I said, distraction. Samsara.

At least, that’s my life.

So yeah, I envy all those folks who have everything figured out. Sure, they have their own struggles, it’s not like they’re home free, but there’s just this gaping emptiness sitting in my soul, and no matter what else I do to try and fill it, nothing ever changes.

I just need to stop. Hahaha. That’s what I’ve been telling myself for God knows how many years now, and I’m still here, the very same place, stuck in front of this great impassable wall, and here I am with the emotional maturity of a 17 year old.

Well, whatever. Either I figure it out, or I don’t.